The Hard Blue Sky (48 page)

They were expecting them at the boats on the north side of the island, if they came at all.

And they did come.

The men from the other island slipped quietly over to the west tip, Caminada Point, in the heavy dead hour just before it began to get light. Not even the dogs there put up a cry, just a couple of sharp sleepy yelps. Ozzie Pailet heard and woke Dan Rivé up. They both listened: but the barking seemed to come from scattered animals. There was none of the steady howling that meant they had found something. So the two men stretched themselves and looked out at the bay and saw nothing. They settled down to have some more coffee.

After all, the dogs were always shifting around. There was always some sort of racket coming from them.

An hour later the yard dogs began to cry. First there was just one dog (the old spotted hound at the Roualt place) barking, slow and not too sure. Then another took it up, then four or five until the whole sleepy night was full of their calls.

Archange Boudreau stuck his head out the window and saw something moving and his three dogs dancing around the yard like they had a deer cornered. And he saw something else too, a little flash of yellow flame, and then a bigger one. So he gave a yell, and began to scramble into his pants.

Al Landry had been dreaming. He had waked up twice already with the roaring of a dream in his ears, roaring that was like the Gulf in a storm.

The first time he woke up, Adele had sat up and leaned over and looked at him. Even in the dark he could see the little crinkle of worry on her forehead. So he reached out one finger and rubbed out that line. “Don’t pay mind to me, che’,” he said.

And so she slipped back, turning away from him, turning gently with the funny little murmur of a child. And he could tell that she was asleep before her head was down.

For a minute or so he sat bolt upright, feeling the animal pleasure of being the man and the only one awake in the house. Then he dozed off.

The second time he woke up, Adele did not stir. He eased himself back down in the bed, very gently, like a boy sneaking home. But the dream which he had forgotten followed him and he lay staring up at the ceiling, not being quite able to close his eyes.

And it was against the faintly cracked and streaked ceiling that he saw the flickering light. And for a couple of seconds he watched it, wondering what sort of a dream this one would be.

A yellow-orange light. And the dogs began.

And then he understood and went up out of the bed in a big arc. Like a wrestler, he thought briefly, bouncing up from the mat. Like a television wrestler, me. Even at the time he thought that was funny. But just for a minute. Then all he could think of was what his eyes saw.

The grass in the side yard was burning—or that was what it looked like. The palings of the fence were short straight lines of flame. Heat hit him under his chin and he yanked his head in. He was shouting now too, all of a sudden he was conscious of that.

He turned in time to see Adele vanish through the door. He raced after her, past her to the kitchen where the two small round glass fire-extinguisher bulbs hung on the wall by the stove. He snatched them down and looked around again for her. By this time she had got Claudie out of bed. She was heading for the kitchen door with the boy, only half awake and crying, under her arm. In her other hand was the silver coffee pot.

That was fast going, he thought. Her face was calm; she was hurrying just the way she’d hurry to catch a ferry that was leaving shortly. Not many women would behave like that, he thought. He’d have to tell her so later.

The brick foundations of the house on that west side seemed to be burning—and he understood then, finally. It was no ordinary fire. There’d be kerosene or gasoline. And somebody had thrown it—from outside the yard, beyond the dogs’ reach.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Adele come running down the kitchen steps again. This time she was carrying his shotgun. She had figured it the same way.

He took the gun away from her. “I got to go see about the boat.” Maybe they had been down there. In spite of the guards.

He handed Adele the shovel. He didn’t like leaving her, but there might be trouble down at the wharf.

She was already at work with the shovel, digging a little path through the burning grass to get to the side of the house. Annie turned up, alongside him, with a spade. And he realized that he’d forgot about her. He was so ashamed that he hesitated a second.

“Keep it off the house,” Annie said quietly to her stepmother. She looked heavy-eyed and sleepy.

Al ducked back then, and raced along the path. He glanced over his shoulder, just once. The two stooped figures were outlined dark against the fire. What a target, he thought for an instant, if anybody was figuring that way.

But they had to save the house. And he had to be sure the boat was safe. So he ran harder.

“Shovel it under around the foundations,” Annie said.

Behind them were a couple of hollow popping sounds from a shotgun.

“I got to see about that,” Adele muttered, “when I get through here.” Al had put the little glass balls of extinguisher liquid on the back steps. Now she ran to get them and tossed them into the worst spot.

“Gasoline,” Annie said. “Burning on the bare ground.”

They shoveled as hard as they could in the hard-packed mud of the yard, shoveled a path through the burning area alongside the house, smothering out some of the flames.

Annie felt her eyebrows begin to scorch and she stopped for a minute and rubbed at them.

“Hurt yourself?”

Annie shook her head.

“Be careful,” Adele said. Her spade had not stopped.

She was stronger than she looked, Annie thought. She was working like a man. And you had to give her that: she wasn’t the least bit upset or nervous-looking.

Adele dropped her shovel to drag over a wheelbarrow load of sand: Al had brought it yesterday to make a sandbox for Claudie. She shoveled it now, carefully, on the flames that burned on the ground under the house itself.

Annie pointed. “Look there!”

Gasoline had splashed up the side of the house, almost up to the little loft window and it was burning.

“I get to that in a minute,” Adele said; “got to get it from under first.”

Al came back, still at a run. His face was brilliant red and his mustache hung down over his mouth like a piece of wet paper. He put the shotgun carefully aside and took a shovel.

In the end it was Annie who had the idea, had it all at once. And she turned and grabbed up two big buckets, the biggest she could find. She had remembered the pigpen and the little spring that turned the mud into liquid, a thick syrupy liquid that could be thrown by handful or bucketful.

She kicked down the bars. If the pigs got out, it was just too bad. She heard them down at the far end, snorting. They wouldn’t go too far, and with the ear notches she could find them again.

Full, the buckets were heavier than she’d expected. She staggered uncertainly, then, bending her body forward, she got herself moving at a half-run.

“Al,” she yelled, “hey, Al!” That was the first time she’d called him by his first name. She was a little surprised how natural it had come to her.

Won’t call him Papa again, she thought. And then: that’s a stupid thing to think of.

“You throw it,” she said, “I can’t.”

In a second he had scooped up one bucket, moved as close as he could, and splashed the syrupy mud down the side of the fire.

“That got it,” Adele said and grabbed the empty bucket and ran off with it.

Annie was throwing the mud by handfuls and listening to the splat and sizzle. Al yanked the bucket away and slung its contents in a heavy stream like molasses against the wall.

“Get another one,” he said to Adele.

As Annie left, Adele was coming back with two full buckets.

In five minutes the path of the fire was covered with the sticky, slop-filled mud. Where little flames still flickered—at the edges—they threw double handfuls. Adele was giggling like a kid. “Going to be weeks before we get the smell out the house.”

Annie just looked at her.

“Well,” Al said, “we got a house left, che’.”

Annie wiped her hands on her sleeves. “We don’t have a fence.”

Al shrugged. “Let it burn … ain’t worth the trouble saving now.”

“Oh,” Annie said and scratched at her head, “one of the dogs got bashed in the head or something. Down by the pen, I noticed.”

“God,” Al said, “I got no time for that.” He crossed the yard to the place where he had leaned the shotgun. He checked the shells. “I got to go see,” he said, and waved his hand toward the other houses—you could see the faint red glow through the trees.

“It’s out all right,” Adele said. “Here, leastways.”

“You watch it, che’ … so the fence don’t catch nothing else. Me, I’m going to take a quick look to see there ain’t nobody hanging around here. And then I leave the gun with you, no?”

Adele nodded.

When he had gone Annie said: “If there was anybody around wanted to shoot us, they’d done it when we was standing in front of the fire, fighting it.”

She couldn’t stop herself. She shivered, hard and all over.

Adele noticed. “It’s done with.” She put out her hand to touch Annie’s shoulder, then changed her mind.

And Perique was there, all of a sudden, standing just the other side of the burning fence. “You all right?” he asked Adele.

She laughed, such an easy relaxed laugh. Annie hated her for it.

“I’d come before,” Perique said to Adele, “only my old man went out chasing something or other he think he see. And he leave me to put out the fire in the henhouse.”

“Al is looking around just this very minute,” Adele said. “Back by the pen, there.”

“Okay,” Perique said. “I’m staying here, me. So he don’t go shooting at me.”

Annie shivered again, even harder this time. And just when he was looking at her. She stomped her feet and then bent to examine her bare toes. “I got something in my foot,” she said.

“I reckon it’s over,” Perique said.

And his tone—she was furious—he thought she was afraid.

“Who was it?” Adele was asking.

And Perique was just shrugging. “Didn’t see nobody but I got a good idea.”

“I wasn’t scared,” Annie said.

“Huh?”

“She was wonderful,” Adele said. “You shoulda seen her.”

“Bet she was,” Perique said flatly.

Al came back. “Ain’t nobody around. …” He stared at Perique. “How’s it at your place?”

“Burned up a couple chickens.”

“Nothing more?”

“Didn’t come near the house. … Maybe the dogs stopped ’em .”

“They killed one of the dogs,” Annie said. And she was still panting though she shouldn’t have been. “I saw it. Only I didn’t see which one.”

Perique looked at her and she had to hold her under lip with her teeth to keep it from trembling.

“Which one?” Adele asked softly. “You see?”

“Tantine,” Al said. “Smash her head in.”

“I’ll kill ’em-,” Annie said.

“Jesus God!” Al said, “where’s Claudie at?”

And Adele chuckled a little and pointed up to the big old chinaberry tree in back of the house. “Told him to climb up there and stay out of the way. … Claudie!”

And his reedy little voice came back: “Claudie. … Claudie!”

“See?”

“Don’t she beat hell,” Al asked proudly, “don’t she now?”

“Look,” Perique said, “you stay by the house before you get hurt.”

“Quit telling me what to do,” Annie said.

“You stay close to the house, bébé, no?” Al asked her.

She just shrugged.

“Hold onto this.” Perique handed Annie his shotgun. “I’m gonna have a look.”

The cistern was on this side of the house, behind the kitchen at a little angle. It was the biggest cistern on the island: they always had water, and plenty, even during the long dry Octobers and Novembers. There was a kind of ladder up the side, just cross-pieces nailed there: they used them for cleaning or repairing.

“What you see?” Al called.

Perique climbed up and looked. “Over by LeBlanc,” he said, “something burning for sure.”

“We gone already.”

“I keep an eye on the fence,” Adele said.

“Grab a bucket, man,” Al said.

“Don’t have to tell me, none,” Perique dropped down. “I brought one over here when I come.”

There were a couple more faint popping sounds. Al and Perique disappeared beyond the light of the burning fence. Adele walked once around the house, slowly, looking. When she had made the circle, she said to Annie who had not moved, who had stood staring straight into the flaming posts: “It looks all right.”

“They’ll burn out in a while.”

From his tree, Claudie said something.

“You stay there!”

Her tone frightened him so he did not even answer.

They could hear people yelling. “That’s your father,” Adele said.

Annie scratched the side of her face. She was beginning to be terribly sleepy again. Her legs were aching.

“What could we do,” Adele was asking, “if they come back this way?”

“Huh?” Annie got her eyes away from the fire. She almost had to reach out with both hands and pull herself free.

“If they come back … listen there.” Some more of the hollow shotgun sounds.

“Those are way off,” Annie said, “down by the west end. I bet they just shooting out at water, empty water.”

“I guess everybody’s up by now.”

Annie giggled. “With all this racket, they either up or dead.”

The nightgown made Adele look thinner than ever, a seer-sucker nightgown printed all over with little sprays of flowers.

“Don’t let that thing catch,” Annie said.

“I want to see could we do something with the fence.”

“Hell,” Annie said, “let it burn; it’s mostly gone now.”

Adele went over to the front steps. “I’m going get a dress on, and I’ll be right back out.”

“Hurry up,” Annie said.

She waited. It wasn’t more than two minutes before Adele was back.

“Okay,” Annie said, “you watch it now.”

As she was walking away, Adele said, very quietly: “And your boyfriend does not come to see how you are. …”